From Elizabeth Wiggs' blog, "The Beholder:"

People, today I had my very first wedding freak-out. It sounds surprising because planning this wedding has not been stress-free by any stretch of the mind, but I’ve never shed actual tears over anything.

But this hair thing has me at the end of my rope. First, though, the good news: the gal who styled me was fabulously nice and I have every confidence in her skills. She knows what she’s doing. And the style she gave me this morning was certainly pretty. The trouble, though, is that maybe I’m not being specific enough about what I want. For reference, here are the first two updos that I got, followed by my inspiration photograph.

Hair trial #1, which, while lovely, is too low for my taste. Also the front was a disaster:

Hair trial #2:

Aaaand my inspiration photo. If I could just buy a wig in my hair color that looked exactly like this, I would do it in a second:

I think it’s funny that I showed both stylists this picture of Eva Longoria and the previous two updos are what I ended up with. It’s like we weren’t looking at the same photograph. Anyway, without further ado, here is today’s updo:

I realized I forgot to get one taken from the front, so here’s a photo I just took of myself. Apologies for the blindingly shiny face; I had to lighten the CRAP out of the shot so you could see my hair.

For the sake of being thorough, here’s the back again, this time without natural lighting (sunlight hides frizz really well).

Okay. So here’s what I CAN say: this is a lovely hairstyle. Lovely, lovely. Very classic. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t match up with my vision – and I completely believe that my vision is possible, because if there’s one thing I can brag about it’s that I have pretty, easy-to-style hair. My main trouble with the updo is it looks alarmingly similar to how I wear my hair every single day. I mean, the style I got today is how my hair looks when I’m WORKING out for, eff’s sake:

And I didn’t even look in the mirror to do that! (p.s. That picture is from April, so about 15-20 pounds ago. Weird. And Awesome. I’m proud of my bod these days.)

Anyway. Back to the hair. In conclusion, while I can appreciate how lovely today’s style was, I simply don’t think it does my hair justice. I think, though, that since the stylist was so wonderful and clearly talented, I might ask for another trial with her and try to be very honest and specific. When we were finishing up this morning, she said that on the wedding day she would add more volume to the back and make the curls go lower. Here’s what I think she meant:

…or, if you’ll bear with my rudimentary Photoshop PowerPoint skills, here’s a rough idea:

(Do you love my fashional BlueTooth? I’ve started using one so I can stop having breakouts around my cheeks and ears from holding the phone against my face.) So, yeah, I’m feeling pretty frustrated right now. I think part of this is my own fault; I should know how to articulate what I want. And I shouldn’t be shy about saying that I don’t like a particular detail of my hairstyle while I’m sitting in the chair. I’m such a jerk for saying I love it to the stylist’s face and then coming home and ranting about it on my blog.

I’m at my wit’s end*, people. Hence the sobbing breakdown I had as soon as I saw Dave. I went straight from the salon to his office so we could go run errands together, and when he told me I looked pretty I started wailing. Obviously I’m going to have to get another hair trial, and that’s going to cost more money, and I’m going to have to get more and more bitchy with my stylist(s) until I get what I want. Oh crap, writing that last sentence made me cry again. What the frig is going on?! I’m having a meltdown! Good thing I have a cupcake tasting in t-minus 30 minutes, or this day would be a total bust.